Kulturformidling i det lærde tidsrum

Om Peder Syvs Betenkninger ... i anledning af 350-året

Abstract

The scope of this paper is to introduce and contextualise Peder Syv’s 350-year-old treatises on the ‘Cimbrian’ language, Nogle betenkninger om det Cimbriske sprog from 1663 (‘cimbrisk’ meaning roughly Germanic and mainly Danish), a seminal book, being the first work in Danish dedicated to the study of Danish language and literature. Arguing that seventeenth century considerations on ‘language’ are impossible to separate from broader literary and cultural discussions, the paper especially focuses on Syv’s efforts at cultural mediation and popularisation, whereby lines are drawn to European intellectual culture (the German Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, especially its prominent member Georg Philipp Harsdörffer) as well as to contemporary developments on the local book market (specifically the rise of the popular handbook). Finally, it is argued that Betenkninger, as a piece of scholarly communication, in terms of its tendency towards pragmatisation and popularisation of knowledge, represents both an anomaly and an epochal break within Syv’s literary production and the Dano-Norwegian learned milieu in the decades around 1700 as a whole.